Sirte Massacre

Sirte was a town of about 75,000. It was Mouammar Gaddafi’s
home town, and as such did receive massive investment. It was a beautiful
modern city. With the headquarters of the African Union.

NATO bombed hospitals and apartment buildings during their
intervention in Libya in 2011. Both China Television and Telesur of Venezuela
had reporters in the city at the time.

The city was surrounded by “rebels”, their political
opponents, one can be sure many Misratans.

If people stayed in the city they were denied access to the
Red Cross, food, medicine or water.

If they fled the city they were stopped at checkpoints where
they could be kidnapped beaten or killed.

It all depended on who you were, whether you were
recognized, and who stopped you.

After the encirclement of Sirte and its bombardment by NATO
and attack by ground forces, the city looked like a lunar landscape. It was
utterly defaced beyond recognition.

The prime minister of Tunisia and Le Monde both state that
approximately 2 million of Libyas six million residents have fled. 1/3 of the
population of the country has fled. Interestingly this was about what I
estimated the level of adamant opposition to regime change, about 1/3 for, 1/3
against and 1/3 apolitical. This 1/3 apolitical had a majority who opposed the
NATO bombing, once it was clear that Libya was changing irrevocably.

The majority of schools have been extensively damaged,
contradicting the absurd claims by NATO that there precision bombing led to “remarkably
little destruction”. The damage done to Libya through NATO bombing has been
extensive and is in the tens of billions of dollars of damage.

So we can assume that many of the people of Sirte who did
not embrace NATO sponsored total destruction of their previous imperfect way of
life have fled.

Nonetheless people did occasionally rise up, and were
treated very harshly.

Many in Libya did not believe Islamic extremism could take
hold in their society, because in general the concept that one person was more
Muslim than another was a foreign concept to Libyans.

However the core of the religious extremists were a
combination of forces who had fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, exiled from Libya
by Gaddafi who suppressed religious extremism, and fought a long struggle
against it. The core of this movement was the LIFG, the Libyan Islamic Fighting
Group.

Once Libyas borders were breached and rule of law ceased,
foreign fighters streamed in. Takfiri fighters streamed in from all over the
Muslim world. Which countries are they from? We know a major IS figure from
Bahrain visited Sirte area. Turki
al-Binali. Who are the foreign fighters in Libya? Who are the Al Qaeda
and Islamic State groups in Libya? We know the LIFG went to Iraq and
Afghanistan, that they might have fielded 3,000 men or so. We know that many
went to Syria, hooked up with the Islamic State there and then returned to
Libya. We know that Erdogan colluded with these players in unseating Gaddafi
with Turkey a major broker between funneling fighters and arms from Qatar and
Saudi Arabia into Libya, and then from Libya into Syria, and then from Syria
back to Libya. As these countries abilities to control their borders
disintegrate the movement gets progressively easier and easier.

Why is the US playing with fire? Why are we bringing more
firepower and military actions into these three countries? Why are we
cooperating with a Turkey that is bombing its own peoples brothers the Kurds in
Iraq and Syria? Iraq Syria Libya and Yemen. Why have we sold 100 billion
dollars worth of weapons to the Gulf monarchies? Countries whose leaders have
brothers and cousins in Al Qaeda and the Islamic State? Why do we not take
strong action when Saudi Arabia further destabilizes Yemen? Yemen will be the
next Islamic State Al Qaeda country.

What do all these places have in common? The American and
NATO brass are still settling scores from the cold war. The countries they seek
to overthrow are all originally arab socialist allies of Russia. North Yemen,
Libya, Syria and Iraq were all closely affiliated with the USSR in the
70s. And of course we are refighting the
cold war now, destabilizing the Ukraine, then acting shocked as the former
Soviet Republic falls apart under the pressure of the West, and its own
internal tensions, unwilling to see the flaws in its allies, including their
ultra rightist factions and tendencies.

The common denominator is the West is allying with ultra
rightists with sympathies to religious extremists in the Muslim World and
sympathies with Nazis in the Ukraine. Each proxy war we fight tears these
countries further away from their historical friendships with the USSR.

It appears our generals and leaders are fighting long over
wars and causing all sorts of destruction all over the world. A country once
all of its security is stripped, with foreign powers funding armies and
terrorist and guerilla groups in it, is basically destroyed. Delicate webs of ancient
and sometimes uneasy relationships boil over. Minority groups who might have
been suppressed by the former dictators of Syria and Libya and Iraq are now in
danger of extermination.

These are some of the geopolitical elements at work in the
massacre of Sirte.

Islamic extremists came to bully and dictate to the people of
Sirte from the minute Gaddafi’s Libya began to crack under the pressure of
internal dissent, Islamic extremists, arms and special forces coming in from
Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and the NATO air force and special forces
streaming over it, essentially military forces 100 to 200 times greater than
Libya’s own army.

Police had to remain silent as military warlords called the
shots in all these cities, considering themselves heroes of the revolution. How
many of them were uneasy in their hearts, having been delivered victory on a
silver platter with the heavy lifting of airpower arms and special forces of the
United States, Canada, Norway, Netherlands. France. The United Kingdom, Qatar,
Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Has ever such a small army confronted such a
formidable array of adversaries.

Clinton in Egypt boasted “The Libyan Army was not with the
people. Now Libya has no army”. This was a warning to Mubarak. But which people
were the soldiers of the Libyan army not aligned with? With this array of
foreign powers it only took a small resistance. And in fact initially that’s what
we saw, there were more journalists on the road from Brega to Benghazi than
there were revolutionaries.

What is truly dumbfounding is that those of who have wandered
any of these lands, seen the ancient cultures and sites, or with even an ounce
of common sense knew immediately at each of these catastrophic moments, that we
were being lied to about how evil our enemies were, and we knew that these
countries would never fully recover. A violent armed revolution where at a
certain point there are no rules except the rule of the gun is an unimaginable
event to a Brit or an American. Though those who recall the second world war on
Europe have some sense of what this is like. But in general in Europe under the
Nazis a rule of law immediately took over. If you were Jewish Slavic Gypsy Communist
or Gay, you would disappear. Unless you were in a Ukrainian SS unit.

Returning now to Sirte, the second phase of their existence after
the fall of Gaddafis 69 revolution based Libya, was to be lorded over by the
warlords of Misrata. They were tought to forget all they had learned under
Gaddafi, and begin chanting new slogans to new leaders.

Finally the gates of Hell truly opened.

In Libya there are hundreds of rival warlords. But there are
four main constellations of political power. First there is the Libyan Government
that is internationally recognized in the East in Tobruk. This government
consists of people voted into office in an election with one of the lowest
voter turnouts in human history around 15%, plus 1/3 of the population had
fled. What sort of democracy is this ? A country that even after 1/3 of the
population has fled is so dispirited that they do not even bother to vote. Many
candidates were removed from the lists as having been associated with the
Gaddafi government. The Government in
Tobruk is allied with a former Gaddafi era general who acted as a protective
umbrella to the people in the armed forces which were left over from prior to
the NATO intervention/revolution who had not yet been assassinated (at least
one officer a day was assassinated from 2011 to 2015). Kalifa Hefter lived 10
minutes from the CIA headquarters in Virginia for 25 years and was airdropped
back in, by the CIA ostensibly. He is the lesser of many evils. Perhaps he is a
good man. Perhaps he is a CIA puppet. I do not know. He runs the tattered
remains of the Libyan Armed Forces after NATO got done running them through a
meatgrinder of 8,000 aerial attacks against 30,000 soldiers. One plane load of
weapons for each 3 soldiers, as the air buzzed with the US drones beaming
targeting information back to the special forces of the various countries, the
NATO air forces, and their Islamist allies on the ground.

Second there is a second Government in the West in Tripoli
that is more oriented towards Sharia law. This is the group we brought to power
by the gun. The GNC.

Third there restive groups in the South who think life was a
damn sight better before, and would gladly reinstall a Gaddafi to run Libya and
undo what has been done.

Fourth there is the Islamic State. A monstrous abortion of
hate based on former wrongs, as Churchill said of Hitler. The Islamic State is essentially
an alliance between jihaadists and opportunists attaching themselves to the name
of Jihaad, and Sadaam Husseins remaining officers who joined forces with them
to overthrow the Iraqi Shiite power structures, and the Shiite Alawi forces
that form the core of Basher Al Assads Syria. They rolled into Syria built
themselves up, and then attacked into Iraq. They now control parts of many
countries. Without the expertise of the Baathist officers they likely would not
have achieved anywhere near the results they have.

The Islamic state and Al Qaeda were first strongest in Derna,
the home to native born Libyan extremism, but the Libyan army and the Tobruk government
have put some effort into uprooting them from Derna. So while they have great
influence there. Derna is not fully controlled. Sirte became their target.

They completely took over Sirte in May 2015.

They demanded the Sirte mosque be handed over to them when
they were rejected IS killed the Imam. When the people rose up against them
with AK 47s they opened up on them with heavy weapons. Caretakers of the sick
were executed. Their patients were executed.

Those who resisted were beheaded and or crucified. The
population has been ordered to swear allegiance to the Islamic State.

Food and water are rare, medicine is non existant, and those
who can flee are fleeing, many will make their way to Bani Walid, the capital
of Libya’s largest tribe, the Warfalla. Bani Walid is known as one of the
cities more charitably inclined to loyalists, people who feel more in common
with the old Libya than the new.

Sirte has been the site of other massacres by the Islamic
State. 20 Egyptian Coptic Christians were behead there, the Copts still use in
their liturgies elements descended from Pharaonic Egypt 2,000 years or more
before Christ, they are a small minority and they are endangered. God only
knows what would happen if IS took hold in Egypt.

20 Ethiopian Christians were beheaded by IS in Sirte.

Have we not now reached a point where we can say Enough is
Enough?

Syria needs a political dialogue and an end to fighting. That
is for another day for me. Today we speak of Libya. Yemen too. Iraq as well. We
need to difuse the grievances and conditions that have created groups like Al
Qaeda and the Islamic State. I can tell you these groups are extremely
profitable for the large arms companies, and the intelligence contractors, and
can be used by organizations such as the CIA to bring down powers that the CIA
wishes to bring down.

And we must not be angry with the people who were fed up with
Gaddafi and naively thought that inviting NATO and the gulf states to assist in
overthrowing him would lead them to live like other people in so called normal
countries. Imagining a parliamentary government and a market economy without
the iron discipline of Gaddafi’s Jamahiriya.

We need to the flow of weapons and fighters into Libya. We
need to impose UN sanctions against countries engaged in this nefarious trade,
such as Qatar and Turkey.

We need to expel the foreign fighters from Libya.

And we need to do this through international structures that
have not been fatally compromised.

We need to have a commission of truth and reconciliation at
the United Nations. Prison sentences should be considered for the NATO and Gulf
State leadership who violated UN 1973 the resolution to protect Benghazi that
was twisted in front of the worlds eyes to plunge Libya into a hellish disaster
for at least two thirds of its residents, half of whom have already fled.

We need to consider Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn principle “that
what you break you own” and take responsibility for the consequences of
allowing our leadership to live out their ego trips on the backs and fronts of
the Libyan Nation.

Libya is an ancient place with connections to the Eastern Mediterranean
Europe and Africa that go back to the dawn of time.

I have created a petition to the White House to protect the
civilians of Sirte from further abuse from the Islamic State. Please click on
the link below and sign it.

WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:

The people of Sirte Libya have suffered repeated war crimes. They were told to hand over their mosque to the Islamic State. When they refused the mosques Imam was murdered. They rose up with AK 47s. But they were confronted with Islamic State fighters with heavy weapons. These men and their weapons come into Libya via Misrata and the territory controlled by Fajr Dawn. Caretakers and sick people have been murdered. The young men brave enough to resist have been crucified and beheaded. All this time the world has lain silent. This is possible because of the flow of arms and foreign fighters from Qatar and Turkey. There needs to be concerted UN Arab league and US European truth and reconciliation action to halt these flows of arms, and compensation for the damage caused by armed intervention.